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Unity
The final battle for Earth against the Vannai and their forces. Summary With the information obtained from River Tam during Operation Fastball in hand, the Armor Corps coalition launches its final major assault on the largest Vannai Puppet stronghold on Earth; Tel Aviv. After a 15-hour preceding battle, the players are selected as the group to land directly in the heart of the Vannai's terraforming operation and destroy it. Czar, Black Prince, Saltire, Micheal, THE PRESIDENT SPIRIT, Redneck Rider, Hellhound, Todes Engel, Carrier Prime, and White Falcon ride the first dropship in to the beachhead. Their escort dropship, in a an echo of Water Main, takes a hit from a guided missile on their way in. Spurned by the destruction of their allies, the dropship makes a quick landing and dumps the pilots onto the beach. Another guided missile nearly hits the dropship as it makes its delivery, but White Falcon is able to throw up a point barrier in time to catch the missile, saving the crew and allowing them to escape. All pilots are able to make their emergency disembarkation from the dropship without issue, save for Redneck Rider, who clumsily falls out of it. Carrier Prime hacks into the rocket-firing suit that nearly blew up the dropship, temporarily disabling it. A large group of Puppet suits show up to push the pilots off the beach; a medium biped, two light bipeds, and a quadruped medium. The quadruped fires first on Mammoth, being the largest target by far, then splits its fire amongst the other pilots, with its fellow Puppets doing the same against the more normal-sized targets. Mammoth is able to dodge a hail of missiles, but takes a direct hit from a howitzer, taking light damage. Mammoth fires back with its artillery cannons, which the quadruped medium is able to shrug off. The tank follows up with rocket pod and autocannon attacks, dealing significant damage. Todes blocks a metalstorm shot with her point barrier and fires back with her hellion lances, hitting it twice. Hellhound fires his Solar Rifle and Experimental #004 at the Light, which both miss. White Falcon fires his Firestorm Cannons at the Light, hitting it, before switching over to fire at the Medium, adding double Heat Cannons as well. Black Prince attempts to dodge the incoming missile fired by the Heavy and finish off the damaged Light, but fails the jump and takes the missile head on instead, receiving some damage. Carrier Prime attempts to use its Magnetic Force Emitter to try and force the missiles back at the Heavy, but is only able to alter the course of a few of them. Tommy then tries to hack the suit, succeeding in shutting it down and forcefully ejecting its pilot. THE PRESIDENT SPIRIT, free from avoiding fire thanks to Carrier Prime's MFE, is able to fire everything into the quadruped Medium, missing every shot save for a single missile, which is sufficient to kill it. Redneck Rider attempts to finish off the remaining Light on the beachfront, but his Sweetwater malfunctions and breaks. The shot from his suit's Cross however lands dead on and kills the Puppet. Sadly, this leaves Czar and Saltire with nothing to punch for the moment. After receiving some information regarding the configuration of the enemies in the area thanks to Tommy's hacking, a second group of enemies shows up in a second attempt to push Armor Corps out of the beachfront. This group consists of three Lights and another Heavy. The two 'fast' Lights move with their characteristic quickness and fire a mix of plasma rifles and rockets at Black Prince, Saltire, Czar and Redneck Rider. The 'land' Light fires heavy artillery cannons at Mammoth, then missiles at THE PRESIDENT SPIRIT and metalstorms at Carrier Prime. The Heavy attempts to focus its attacks on the lighter Armor Corps suits, firing heavy cannons at Todes Engel and a firestorm cannons at White Falcon, then following up each with heavy shotgun fire. Tank drifting to avoid enemy fire, Mammoth asks for an assist; a request granted by Saltire, who ducks, weaves and tanks with his shields to get into position next to Mammoth, lift him up and toss the massive tank at the enemy Medium suit. The Medium fires its heavy cannons at the tank as it falls, dealing a significant amount of damage to it, but not enough to prevent to bulk of the suit from landing on it and crushing it under its massive weight. Redneck meanwhile dodges the two plasma shots aimed his way from one of the two fast Lights, ditches his broken shotgun and unloads the rest of his suit's weapons into the Light. Only two shots land on the elusive target, but with its armor being light as is, it receives some serious damage from the attack. Hellhound is able to leap in and finish it off. Shrugging off the metalstorm shots, Carrier Prime sends drones to scavenge materials from the crushed Medium underneath Mammoth. It then attempts to hack the Heavy firing at White Falcon, Todes, and everyone else, and then repel the attacks from one of the fast-moving Light suits with its MFE. This backfires spectacularly, completely destroying the MFE and shutting the suit down. Black Prince's efforts to sprint ahead and assist the now shut down Carrier Prime reward him with a powerful hit from an enemy rocket. Czar, not wanting to be denied to opportunity to punch something a second time, runs the other fast-Light suit down and pulverizes it completely in a flurry of attacks. White Falcon blocks the first cannon shot aimed at him by the Heavy with a point barrier and dodges most of the rest. The shotgun blast manages to hit him, but does not have enough power behind it due to distance to penetrate his suit's armor. Falcon opts to fall back and Double Up with Todes Engel, then returns fire with his firestorm cannons. While most of the shots hit, the target Heavy's armor absorbs most of the damage. Double heat cannon shots following this weaken that armor severely. Todes is likewise peppered by the shotgun attack, and returns fire with her helion lances. One shot lands with devastating effect thanks in part to the weakened armor, killing the Heavy dead. The previously ejected pilot of the rocket-launching Heavy is able to return to his suit in the meantime, and Carrier Prime's previous hacks have tipped off nearby forces to the Armor Corps attack. The rocket-Heavy arrives to the battlefield personally, alongside another land-type Light, a new type of Light, and a Heavy identical in configuration to the one Todes just annihilated. The new type of Light gets to work setting down proximity mines, while the other Puppet suits engage the Armor Corps. Redneck Rider throws a point barrier in front of Hellhound, then moves to drop a bulwark in from of the inert Carrier Prime and Doubles Up with Mammoth, firing at the mine-Light. The attacks are able to set off the Light's mines, causing a huge explosion that luckily only claims the mine-Light as a victim. Unfortunately for Hellhound, while Redneck's point barrier absorbs the first stinger cannon shot, he isn't able to dodge the second shot, and takes the hit hard. Although White Falcon is smacked by a missile and takes a fair amount of damage from it, Mammoth is able to perform some impressive maneuvers for a tank so large and avoids the missile spread from the rocket-launching Heavy, firing all of its weapons back at it in response. The Heavy's own thick armor is able to absorb the worst of it, but follow-up attacks from White Falcon's firestorm cannons hit the enemy suit dead on, dealing significant damage and destroying it. Taking metalstorm fire, Todes dodges the first burst of fires and blocks the other with her point barrier. She returns fire with her helion lance twice at the land-type Light, dealing heavy damage to it. THE PRESIDENT SPIRIT experiences some weapon systems issues, but its plethora of guns means it still has something to shoot at. It fires what it can at the land-attack Light, then uses its repulsor shield to deflect its cannon shots back at it. This combined fire enough enough to destroy the Light, so it switches the rest of its gunfire to the other Heavy, dealing light damage to it. Czar is able to get the jump on the Heavy and handily finish it off. Taking advantage of the respite, the heavily damaged Black Prince takes the opportunity to retreat south to the AC-held university district. The rest of the group opts to follow him, with a reactivated Carrier Prime issuing repairs during transit. Upon arriving, they are greeted by friendly forces who inform them that they were followed by another wave of enemies, consisting of two two rocket-firing Heavies and another land-attack Light suit. THE PRESIDENT SPIRIT decides he is better spent assisting with this sector's defenses and retreats further. Carrier Prime takes another shot at hacking, succeeding this time and forcibly ejecting one of the rocket-firing Heavies pilots, then remoting control of the suit to someone at TE HQ. The controlled suit immediately fires at the other rocket-Heavy, stunning it. Redneck Rider fires everything it can at the lone Light, landing enough shots to rip it to pieces. Czar takes advantage of the stunned status of the rocket-Heavy and charges in, tearing it apart and preparing to move on to the other one before Tim let's him know that its under TE control now. With the area temporarily cleared of enemies, Armor Corps begins sending in reinforcements. More dropships destined for the beachfront sector swerve instead to the university sector to deliver their additional troops. In timing with this, the Puppets launch an artillery strike on the university sector from the commercial sector across the map. Zipline and Cultist arrive just in time to watch as the area gets bombarded with long range missile fire. Redneck Rider Doubles Up with Carrier Prime, hulking up on DUR with an additional Bulwark of the Weak and essentially making himself invulnerable to the artillery attack. He throws a point barrier on the stumbling Czar, who otherwise takes a heavy beating from the shellfire that puts him in critical damage. Mammoth attempts to move under Rednack's bulwark but moves too slowly, taking heavy damage only lightened somewhat by a late point barrier from Carrier Prime. White Falcon and Todes take to the air, but neither of them are able to avoid the density of the attack, with Todes taking a missile hit that knocks her out of the air and into an explosion, and Falcon taking an unlucky hit that deals moderate damage to him. At this point, Hellhound opts to retreat and switch to holding gained ground elsewhere, leaving the rest to continue pushing. After the missile attack subsides, Saltire and Carrier Prime get to work trying to patch up their allies. Carrier Prime attempts to get a fix on the location of the firers, while Mammoth fires blindly with his guns in the general direction of where the attack came from. Carrier Prime, Zipline and Saltire suddenly start taking sniper fire. Todes point barriers Slatire, White Falcon point barriers Zipline (although Zipline is able to barely dodge the attack anyway), Carrier Prime point barriers his own incoming shot, negating the ambush completely. Light Tim attempts more hacks on the newfound suits in the commercial districts, but his suit systems are still apparently wonky after the shutdown, as his attempts get nowhere. Mammoth and Cultist continue to fire blindly into the commercial district. The 4 WMGs from Cultist all misfire anyways, but a flyby from Zipline over the commercial district shows that Mammoth's attacks appear to have been landing hits. Zipline makes her pass and drops a bomb, laying waste to the commercial sector and getting a glimpse of the central furnace and crucible districts. She takes some rocket fire in response to her bombing run, sustaining light damage from the attack. Redneck Rider's thermal sensors pick up the snipers from just earlier. He's able to kill one, causing the other two to retreat. More enemy reinforcements arrive at the university sector at this point; two fast Lights, two land-attack Lights, two shock trooper suits and two Heavy rocket suits. Ahead of them runs a proximity mine-equipped Light, apparently attempting to make a suicide run at the Armor Corps team. The two shock trooper suits hang back to charge their weapons while the rest of the Puppets launch their attack. Cultist takes a couple of missile hits. Luckily, his weapons are now fully charged and will soon be ready to fire. Silver Knight arrives, point barriers the first shots from the Puppets aimed at White Falcon, and...uh, starts cutting rockets out of the air, blocking two more shots with his attack. White Falcon fires back at one of the land-attack Lights, lightly damaging it. Zipline circles back and drops a bomb on it, finishing it off. Todes point barriers one of the attacks she wasn't able to dodge, and Redneck Rider's still-active bulwark adds to this. Combined with aegis nanites adding additional protection, she is able to ride out the fire and return shots in kind at the suicide Light. The shot lands, but fails to stop it. Redneck Rider, still Doubled Up with Carrier Prime, similarly tanks the enemy's fire and focuses on the suicide-runner, managing to take him down this time and causing him to detonate. Carrier Prime also takes the missiles head-on, absorbing the impacts with its bloated durability, and launching hacking attacks against the shock troopers and rocket-Heavies, causing many of their weapons to begin to malfunction. Seeing their attack has already lost its momentum, the Puppets retreat. The Armor Corps pilots remain in the University district for a while to enact some repairs. Katyusha arrives from the beach and rolls into the University sector, linking up with Silver Knight, White Falcon, a returned Hellhound, Redneck Rider, Saltire, Czar, Carrier Prime, Mammoth. Turtle arrives as well, but immediately wanders off on his own into the war-torn city. Scouting ahead, Turtle takes note that the structures within the crucible sector of the city appear to be armored and fortified compared to the rest of the city. He is quickly detected by the Vannai Puppets, however, and is forced to dodge against rocket fire.The rest of the AC pilots get ready to make their second push into the city. Carrier Prime leads the way by trying to hack into the Puppet communications netwrok. He is successful enough in his efforts to glean that the Puppet's objective does not appear to be defense, but a delaying action. With White Falcon having already spotted a large force moving out from the crucible once again into the university sector, Ivan takes the initiative to convert to siege mode and launch a heavy barrage of rockets into the crucible area. Mammoth trundles along to back up the pinned Turtle, who dodges the rockets and tries to scale the closest building to escape his attackers. Carrier Prime attempts to hack into the enemy approaching enemy force, consisting of 2 fast-Lights, 2 suicide bombers, 1 ground attack-Light, 2 shock troopers, and 2 rocket-firing Heavies, but botches the hack horribly, winding up counter-hacked instead by one of the Puppet suits. The hack jumps to Katyusha as well, infecting both suits with an unknown virus. Katyusha's previously-fired rockets then land, slowing down and seriously damaging the enemy suits making the cross from the crucible into the university sectors. Mammoth and Hellhound both lay into the oncoming fast-Light suits. Most of the enemies fire their weapons at the marked Carrier Prime. Redneck Rider activates his bulwark again next to Carrier Prime and tries to prioritize the suicide bombers, succeeding in setting off their explosives in some impressive displays of pyrotechnics.Tim buckles down and works furiously to rid Carrier Prime of the enemy virus, eventually succeeding. Turtle meanwhile is successful in scaling the closest building, giving him a vantage point into the crucible's center, where he can spot something large moving in the distance. Katyusha fires its rockets into the enemy rockets aimed at it, knocking every single one of them out with suspicious ease. With Turtle well out of his reach, Mammoth instead turns around and tries to regroup with Redneck Rider and Carrier Prime, taking some light fire on the way. His returning fire takes a Light down, while Saltire and Czar are able to Double Up and absolutely pulverize the remainder. White Falcon is able to avoid the majority of fire aimed in his direction, but gets glanced by a metalstorm, which deals heavy damage to his suit, and is forced to use his point barrier to block the remainder. He targets one of the rocket-Heavies and blasts a hole through one and wears through another. Silver Knight dives into the melee and finishes off another Heavy with Hellhound. Only one Light suit remains, making a move on Saltire but getting shot down by White Falcon's drones. Turtle continues to scout ahead, quickly leaving the battle behind him as he uses his suit's leviathan module to jump from rooftop to rooftop. He lands clumsily and loudly, but succeeds in getting a closer look at the crucible. He is able to make out a huge number of suits migrating towards the group, as well as something absolutely massive moving in the distance; something bigger than even a Fortress. Carrier Prime, still feeling concerned over the systems compromise, goes over his suit's internals again before launching a scan of the crucible ahead. His systems come back telling him more or less the same thing Turtle's eyes did, though in more detail. He is able to determine that the huge number of suits are fortifying themselves in a wall-like manner to make entry into the center crucible area as difficult as possible. Carrier Prime continues to hack whatever he can, tapping in to a group of enemies moving from the crucible into the university sector. The enemy suits seem to be uninterested in the Armor Corps suits on the border of the crucible, and Tim interprets that the suits appear to be disengaging from the crucible and furnace sectors. Turtle continues to observe enemy movements from his perch on top of one of the taller office buildings. He sees enemy suits stacking up on the border between the crucible and university sectors, but going no farther out other than to engage stray coalition pilots. Katyusha uses Turtle's targeting data from before to fire on the largest mass of enemies moving into the university sector. Turtle is able to make out. Unfortunately, everyone had forgotten that Ivan had been previously hacked as well, which became clear once Katyusha received confirmation from Turtle that all the missiles were direct hits, while Turtle watched those missiles either hit empty buildings or fly directly at him. With the bulk of the Puppets being successfully baited to the university/crucible border, the Armor Corps team moves in from the residential area into the furnace via highway. They are greeted with an odd sight of an odd, black substance covering the area, and from it, a pulsating grey organic material growing from and winding through the terrain. There are, however, no suits, and everyone gets the sense that this is the objective that they have come here to destroy. At this point, Cultist arrives to reinforce the group. Turtle is able to dodge the friendly fire and radio back a warning that the enemy is scrambling targeting data, causing Carrier Prime to stress out over getting duped and Ivan to punch a hole through his suit's screen trying to fix the scrambling. Tim restarts Carrier Prime to try an clear the hack. As the Armor Corps pilots try to figure out what's going on, those on the highway to the furnace spot a suit crawl out from some nearby rubble. The pilots initially mistake him for a Puppet, but he has clear AC markings. However, not only does he look rather battered, but his suit is covered in patches of the grey organic material as well. As the AC suits start making threats at the "zombie", it raises its hands to show its unarmed, and points at the back of its head and turns around, showing a large amount of grey material covering its back. It then makes a cutting gesture across its neck, followed by a "gun-shooting" motion. White Falcon immediately freaks out and tries to shoot at the "zombie", who quickly repeats the motion, and it eventually comes across that the muted AC pilot is asking the other AC pilots not to fire. At that moment, a radar ping hits every suit in the area, coming from the bastion sector. A massive signature characteristic of a superfort. The "zombie" suit makes the "don't shoot gesture over and over again in response. Redneck Rider and White Falcon remain suspicious of the "zombie". Czar asks the zombie if the grey stuff is safe to make contact with. The zombie shakes his head. In response to Redneck Rider's questions about why his radio doesn't work, the zombie attempts more hand gestures, making a gun symbol, crossing his arms, pointing at himself, and then pointing at the grey stuff on his suit. Silver Knight tells the zombie to wait there while the other AC pilots take care of the superfort, but the zombie attempts more charades, making a gun motion, then punching the flat of his hand. White Falcon threatens the zombie again, to which he simply throws up his hands, as if to say "What the fuck?". Falcon then floats up into the air to get a better look around, determining that the black fluid and grey matter are flowing from the stadium nearby. He also sees the remnants of crashed scouting airships from the day prior. Carrier Prime finally comes back online in time to register the ping after everyone else. He begins to go over his suit's systems, but eventually realizes that he hasn't simply been hacked; his entire suit has been rewritten; including the master backup. Tommy opts to take the time to rebuild Carrier Prime's OS to clear the hacking for good. Cultist decides there's no point in more games and flies into the air, charging his weapons. The superfort lumbers out of the furnace and into view now. Cultist continues to bide his time. As the pilots continue to try and figure out what the zombie is trying to tell them, Saltire sends a drone over to it with a pen and notepad. The zombie suit quickly writes down everything he can in sloppy handwriting, relaying that not only does he not want to be shot, but that the grey material is a byproduct of the black fluid, and is highly explosive. He was part of the scouting force sent in 24 hours prior to the start of the operation, but his ship was shot down, and his suit covered in the grey material. The grey material seems to absorb energy and store it, which is what makes it highly explosive. He writes that Tel Aviv is the center of operations for the Puppets, and that the arena is basically being used as one massive battery. The AC suits back off a bit while they decide on what to do. Carrier Prime opts for a further retreat after Tommy successfully finished completely repairing his suit. He coaches Ivan through his own tech problems and manages to un-hack Katyusha as well. Redneck Rider radios everything the zombie scout told them back the HQ and waits for confirmation that they can destroy the city. Command radios back and tells them that, yes, destroying everything is in fact the best option. Meanwhile, Turtle has been making his way through the furnace and into the bastion. He successfully stealths his way in, finding another superfort in the process of awakening. However, it seems to notice him, triggering all Puppet suits in the nearby sectors into action. Ivan attempts to shoot more rockets out of the air with more rockets while everyone else dodges for their dear lives and fires back at the latest wave of enemies. Turtle, faced with the stirring superfort, opts to continue scouting for the Arena. Against the superfort that the rest of the AC team is already engaging, Cultist unleashes his black-hole based arsenal against it and its supporting Puppet units, but takes some heavy fire in return and retreats to apply some repair gel and wait for his weapons to recharge. Carrier Prime winds up nearly crippled from the rush of enemy attacks. The hacker superfort that Cultist buzzed with black hole guns targets the damaged Carrier Prime with its tech, shutting it down and using its command network as a route to simultaneously hack every other AC suit in the area. Silver Knight and White Falcon Double Up and go after the hacker superfort. Hellhound asks Redneck Rider to Gattai with him, but Red is too busy shouting at people to notice, so Hellhound instead changes his focus to the hacker superfort. Czar joins in on the attack as well. Silver Knight and White Falcon are able to do extreme amounts of damage to the superfort on their own, however. Meanwhile the superfort that Turtle had found just earlier had been charging its main weapon, a giant cannon. Having been on the receiving end of a lot of damage himself, Tommy contacts Command and informs them that now that they have dealt enough damage to the enemy forces in the area, they should launch some missiles at the Arena and let the resulting sludge explosion take care of the rest. This prompts everyone not currently dodging or shooting to get the fuck out of there as soon as Command radios back the acknowledgement, starting with Tommy himself, then Czar carrying Saltire and Ivan, then the rest. After everyone has started the evac, however, Cultist takes matters into his own hands and fires his weapons at the Arena. Just as he does so, the cannon-superfort fires its own weapon it him. Cultist takes the hit head on, but his shots got off first, making it to the Arean. The energy weapons detonate the grey-matter, the energy of the explosion which is then in turn absorbed by the Sludge, which is then released in an even *bigger* explosion that outshines the sun for a few seconds. Suits around the world experience a sudden, momentary power drain, but recover moments later, standing to Armor Corps' ultimate victory against the Vannai on Earth. Aftermath After Unity, suit faction activity would decrease dramatically as those involved withdrew to recover and observe how the situation would change. The Vannai never recovered from this attack on their main base of planetary operations, but it would be over a year before Armor Corps would be able to launch the final operation to destroy them completely. Category:PACYOA: TE Category:Mission Record Category:Middle East